Famous Sunsets Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Sunsets poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sunsets poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sunsets poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Simplicity

by Dejan Stojanovic
The most complicated skill 
Is to be simple. 

To say more while saying less 
Is the secret of being simple. 

To not say all that can be said 
Is the secret of discipline and economy. 

To leave out beautiful sunsets 
Is the secret of good taste. 

To hide feelings when you are near crying 
Is the secret of dignity. 

To...Read more of this...

Song of the Future

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song. 
Our chiefest singer yet has sung 
In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, 
All carelessly and sadly flung 
To that dull world he thought so vain. 

"I care for nothing,...Read more of this...

Nos Immortales

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Perhaps we go with wind and cloud and sun, 
Into the free companionship of air; 
Perhaps with sunsets when the day is done, 
All's one to me -- I do not greatly care; 
So long as there are brown hills -- and a tree 
Like a mad prophet in a land of dearth -- 
And I can lie and...Read more of this...

To Mother

by Marina Tsvetaeva
 In the old Strauss waltz for the first time 
We had listened to your quiet call, 
Since then all the living things are alien 
And the knocking of the clock consoles. 

We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets, 
And are drunk on nearness of the end. 
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy 
Is put in the hearts...Read more of this...

The Call of the Winds

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Ho, come out with the wind of spring,
And step it blithely in woodlands waking; 
Friend am I of each growing thing
From the gray sod into sunshine breaking; 
Mine is the magic of twilights dim, 
Of violets blue on the still pool's rim, 
Mine is the breath of the blossoms young 
Sweetest of fragrances storied or sung­
Come, ye earth-children, weary...Read more of this...

Finis

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 An idle rhyme of the summer time, 
Sweet, and solemn, and tender; 
Fair with the haze of the moon's pale rays, 
Bright with the sunset's splendour.

Summer and beauty over the lands -
Careless hours of pleasure; 
A meeting of eyes and a touching of hands -
A change in the floating measure.

A deeper hue in the skies of blue, 
Winds from...Read more of this...

Buckwheat

by Carl Sandburg
 1THERE was a late autumn cricket,
And two smoldering mountain sunsets
Under the valley roads of her eyes.

There was a late autumn cricket,
A hangover of summer song,
Scraping a tune
Of the late night clocks of summer,
In the late winter night fireglow,
This in a circle of black velvet at her neck.

2In pansy eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a beach...Read more of this...

Tawny

by Carl Sandburg
 THESE are the tawny days: your face comes back.

The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden early on the trellis.

The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise.

Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome.

Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange.

Tawny days: and your face again....Read more of this...

The Land God Forgot

by Robert William Service
 The lonely sunsets flare forlorn
 Down valleys dreadly desolate;
The lordly mountains soar in scorn
 As still as death, as stern as fate.

The lonely sunsets flame and die;
 The giant valleys gulp the night;
The monster mountains scrape the sky,
 Where eager stars are diamond-bright.

So gaunt against the gibbous moon,
 Piercing the silence velvet-piled,
A lone wolf howls his ancient rune --
...Read more of this...

William H. Herndon

by Edgar Lee Masters
 There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
And I saw the figures of the past,
As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
Move through the incredible sphere...Read more of this...

The First Jasmines

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands with
these jasmines, these white jasmines.
I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the river thorough the
darkness of midnight;
Autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of a road in the
lonely waste, like...Read more of this...

I send Two Sunsets

by Emily Dickinson
 I send Two Sunsets --
Day and I -- in competition ran --
I finished Two -- and several Stars --
While He -- was making One --

His own was ampler -- but as I
Was saying to a friend --
Mine -- is the more convenient
To Carry in the Hand --...Read more of this...

Nature rarer uses Yellow

by Emily Dickinson
 Nature rarer uses Yellow
Than another Hue.
Saves she all of that for Sunsets
Prodigal of Blue

Spending Scarlet, like a Woman
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly
Like a Lover's Words....Read more of this...

Elm

by Sylvia Plath
for Ruth Fainlight


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone...Read more of this...

Woolworths

by Mark Hillringhouse
 for Greg Fallon

A kid yells "*************" out the school bus window.
I don't think anyone notices the afternoon clouds turning pink along the horizon,
sunlight dripping down the stone facades,
the ancient names of old stores fading like the last century
above the street, above the Spandex women who adjust their prize buttocks,
sweating in the sun as I wonder how this city...Read more of this...

A Gravestone

by William Allingham
 Far from the churchyard dig his grave, 
On some green mound beside the wave; 
To westward, sea and sky alone, 
And sunsets. Put a mossy stone, 
With mortal name and date, a harp 
And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp; 
Then leave it free to winds that blow, 
And patient mosses creeping; slow, 
And wandering wings, and footsteps rare...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Sunsets

by Anne Sexton
 Something 
cold is in the air, 
an aura of ice 
and phlegm. 
All day I've built 
a lifetime and now 
the sun sinks to 
undo it. 
The horizon bleeds 
and sucks its thumb. 
The little red thumb 
goes out of sight. 
And I wonder about 
this lifetime with myself, 
this dream I'm living. 
I could eat the sky 
like...Read more of this...

An Ode to Antares

by Alan Seeger
 At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide 
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills 
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills 
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, 
I watched the red star rising in the East, 
And while his fellows of the flaming sign 
From prisoning daylight more and more released, 
Lift their pale lamps, and,...Read more of this...

As the Heart Hopes

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 It is a year dear one, since you afar
Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight­
A wondrous year! perchance in many a star
You have sojourned, or basked within the light
Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod
The glittering pathways of the Pleiades,
And through the Milky Way's white mysteries
Have walked at will, fire-shod. 

You may have gazed in the immortal...Read more of this...

Haze

by Carl Sandburg
 KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.

Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.

Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...

The Fighting T?m?raire

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 It was eight bells ringing, 
For the morning watch was done, 
And the gunner's lads were singing 
As they polished every gun. 
It was eight bells ringing, 
And the gunner's lads were singing, 
For the ship she rode a-swinging, 
As they polished every gun. 

Oh! to see the linstock lighting, 
T?m?raire! T?m?raire! 
Oh! to hear the round shot biting,...Read more of this...

To an Ungentle Critic

by Robert Graves
 The great sun sinks behind the town 
Through a red mist of Volnay wine.... 
But what’s the use of setting down 
That glorious blaze behind the town? 
You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look 
For newer pictures in this book; 
You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. 

A fresh wind fills the evening air 
With horrid crying of night...Read more of this...

The Black Virgin

by G K Chesterton
 One in thy thousand statues we salute thee 
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim 
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces 
Walk in a forest calling on one name 
And, most of all, how this thing may be so 
Who know thee not are mystified to know
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries...Read more of this...

Dedication To Providence

by Robert William Service
 I loved to toy with tuneful rhyme,
My fancies into verse to weave;
For as I walked my words would chime
So bell-like I could scarce believe;
My rhymes rippled like a brook,
My stanzas bloomed like blossoms gay:
And that is why I dream this book
 A verseman's holiday.

The palm-blades brindle in the blaze
Of sunsets splendouring the sea;
The Gloaming is a lilac haze
That impish...Read more of this...

The Call Of The Wild

by Robert William Service
 Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
 Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
 Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
 Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung...Read more of this...

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